doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com A story 99 years in the making.

Damn! You could probably write a good sized book of your adventures in tracking down rifles and their accessories.Very interesting and I applaud your persistence.

Thanks, the story now gets interesting ;-).

Lot 326 of the Amber auction had the Mann mounts that Niedner had sold to Frank Sargent. Looks like Amber had followed up and then bought them from Sargent. The tag clearly shows they came from Sargent. But the scope was missing.

My main rival at the auction for this lot would be Mr. Smith so we made an agreement. If he won the lot I would pay him half of the hammer price for the re-decapper (it belongs to another Niedner rifle I have) the Fecker tube with patches and the bullet mould that both belonged with the underhammer.

Mr. Smith won the lot I got the tools he got Mann mounts.

I arrived back in Alaska a happy camper with the underhammer rifle, most of the tools plus Mr. Niedner's personal cased flintlock pistol that he made for himself (another story).

No clue about where the scope could be, none the people who were running the auction had no idea.

There were a lot of us that were disappointed when they moved the Amber estate out of the Chicago area to be auctioned.I got a catalog and probably could not have afforded much more at the time but it would have been a treat to see the famous collection in the flesh.

As things seem to happen I was working a week-on week-off schedule at the time. The auction was on my week off so my friends who all wanted stuff bought my plane ticket to MA......and back ;-).

When I got back home I started to do a lot more research on Mr. Amber and what happened to his estate. Long story short I spent a lot of time in the next two or so years at it until I was sure where the scope was.

Found where I thought it was and then I made a very bad error in judgement, lost the scope where it was not recoverable. Put it down as a learning experience which I guess I learned nothing from because a few years later I did the very same thing.

That would have been around 1989-90 or at least in that time period. I've keep an eye on it in my peripheral vision but did nothing about it.

Last winter I had a visitor who would be visiting, this spring, where I thought the scope might be. I sent him pictures of the scope and a few weeks ago it was confirmed, the scope was still there.

Negotiations were then started to move the scope back with the underhammer rifle.

More to follow.

Michael,
Thanks for posting these pictures. I have lusted after that 40 cal ever since I first saw the pictures in Ned Roberts' book in the '60s when I was a teenager. It's such a simple, elegant rifle.
Thanks, Ron

The scope arrived here yesterday afternoon.

Has anyone seen mounts like this one? It kind of looks like a Pope one, but different.

The tightening bar with the round ends where made by Niedner, I have seen several.

The scope came with the leather case as well. It's now undergoing a Pecard leather treatment.